Re: With 8.1.1 BM has just thrown a very destructive blow to the entire C-grading business

Re: With 8.1.1 BM has just thrown a very destructive blow to the entire C-grading businessby Robert Houllahan on Nov 21, 2011 at 1:04:05 am

I think the obvious bigger picture is that Color Grading used to require custom hardware (DUI, 2K,Pandora etc.) or specialized computers (early Resolve on Linux) but that is now all in the past. All of these systems from Resolve to Film-Master to Baselight and Mistika run on commodity hardware.

It used to be very expensive to buy an Avid for the same reason, now not so much. Look what happened with Final Cut sure there were a ton of Pikers who didn't (and probably still don't) know shit about what they are doing. But there were also a great deal of professionals who adapted the app (I was never a fan but I am a user) to professional environments buy setting it up properly.

So fast forward to a bunch of whiners asking how to calibrate their imac monitor to do color work, and good luck to them. I got Light-Space and a Hubble to do that. I have had jobs come in from other places that did not do proper setup and botched it.

I really like the Baselight but not every shop can build a business model around it. That said the high end machines are all merging into multifaceted "do it all" tools which are becoming less color only centric all the time.

So what are the other choices? Speed grade is about to be free and Scratch is stuck with a less powerful and more buggy toolset and frankly I think Film-Master is in a similar position where it is not a Baselight replacement and not much more powerful or stable than Resolve. I think BMD has priced a standalone color grading app (that is very powerful and very stable with allot of legacy tools) at the price color grading apps are all going to be in a few years. There will still be high end tools but their price will also decline.

People can wish for the Moore's law genie to be placed back in the bottle but without a global collapse it's not going to happen. When Computerized systems become software they inevitably become less costly over time.

And I believe as of the time I write this most of the replies on Red-User are of the unconcerned about this nature as well.

So you can call it partisan or whatever but that is just the reality and it's not going back. Work will still go to people who have an eye and have setup properly to do the job. I suspect there will be more Grading apps available soon and as they are software they will continue to be added to and refined.